Amesbury second-graders make music -- and the instruments

Thursday

Apr 17, 2014 at 2:14 PMApr 17, 2014 at 2:14 PM

By Carol Feingoldnewburyport@wickedlocal.com

So it isn’t the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but there is an orchestra at the Cashman Elementary School nonetheless. It’s the second-grade "Recycled Orchestra."For 30 minutes each week, CES second-graders have music instruction with CES music teacher Johanna Kimball. They’ve been working on drumming and percussion using non-pitched instruments such as bongo drums and pitched instruments such as boom whackers, but the time had come to create their own orchestra."I’ve asked them all to bring one recycled item from their homes," Kimball said, "a coffee can, paper roll, shoe box. I’ve also asked the families for raw rice and pasta as fillers."Filling the containers with rice or raw pasta the students create instruments. They get to determine how the instrument will sound and how the sound changes depending upon the size, she said. "I’m getting them thinking creatively about how sound can change. Instruments all have a different tone color."Once the instruments are completed, they will compose their own rhythms and listen to one another."Then I would like them to play together as an orchestra," Kimball said. "As the weather gets nicer we’ll go outside and have a marching band. It’s fun."Fun is the operative word when it comes to music at CES. The students acquire the music skills necessary to prepare them for choosing chorus or band when they arrive at Amesbury Middle School, but they have a lot of fun along the way.It all starts in pre-kindergarten, Kimball said."We do a lot of singing. They’re getting used to coming to the music room and circle time, singing songs, and starting to think about the heartbeat of music, the steady beat. That really carries into kindergarten."Kindergarteners work on singing and creative movement, she said, "because children listen critically and respond to what they hear."By first grade they are singing, studying creative movement and developing the steady heartbeat into music and rhythms and pulses. They develop a music language and learn to decipher how many sounds they hear on one beat. They come to the music room once a week.Because Kimball’s position isn’t full-time the second-graders have music only 30 minutes each week. During that time they have drumming circles with African drums and work on creating their own instruments and composing their own songs.By third grade, the focus is on recorders. With donations from sponsors and the students’ families a plastic recorder is purchased for each third-grader."We do ‘recorder karate,’" Kimball said. "They each have a method book. The music is progressively more difficult starting with ‘Hot Cross Buns’ and ending with Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’"Each class begins with lesson time. The students then divide into small groups. When the students think they are ready, they come in to play for Kimball. For the first song mastered they receive "white belts," which is a piece of yarn to hang from their recorders, and on up to the highest "black belts.""They love it," Kimball said. "Because they’ve gotten so excited I’ve created a harmony belt for playing harmony and a rainbow belt for composing their own recorder pieces. I can’t tell you how excited they are, which is great. They are learning fingering, reading music, identifying note names and values. It’s meant to be a precursor to band instruments."In fourth grade the focus is on keyboarding or piano. Like "recorder karate," they each have a Popsicle stick and they receive marks on the sticks to see how they are progressing."Now we’re working on composing for ‘Poem in Your Pocket Day,’" Kimball said. "Each student in the school chooses a poem and keeps it in their pocket. During the day they share it with different people. Using that text we’re deciding how to compose a melody to go with it. To compose a melody they need a beat, pitch, and meter and they have to decide what shapes the lyrics have, the words of the poem."Fourth graders have to write their songs on staff paper and play the songs for each other."In the end I hope they are coming away with the joy of being a music maker," Kimball said, "being a part of an ensemble and developing an appreciation for music in our lives. I hope they learn to be better listeners."